CMAT stands for the Common Management Admissions Test. It is a national-level MBA admission test , conducted by All India council for Technical Education (AICTE), a national-level Apex Advisory Body which is vested with the statutory authority for technical education in India.

AICTE launched CMAT to reduce the physical, mental and financial stress of students in attending multiple entrance examinations conducted by the institutions for admission to management programs in AICTE-approved institutions. There are 3500+ AICTE approved B-schools which are expected to take CMAT scores, translating to availability of over 4 lakh seats for a CMAT test-taker. Unlike other management entrance exams of similar nature, CMAT gives you a shot at the premier B-schools of the country such as JBIMS, Sydenham, KJ Somaiya, IMT and GIM among others.

There are four sections in the test. The sections are
a) Quantitative Techniques & Data Interpretation
b) Logical Reasoning
c) Language Comprehension and
d) General Awareness.
There are 25 questions in each section. The duration of test is 180 minutes, with no break during this time window. So, students could move back and forth between sections. This means that the sections are not timed individually, and the onus is on the students to manage timing between the sections, while ensuring that they show their competency in all the sections. There is a negative marking of 1 mark for every wrong answer.

CMAT will rank its takers based on both the Over all test score and individual sectional scores. Those with high overall scores will get better ranks. Ties will be decided based on the performance of the students in the individual sections – those who scored better in Quant will get better ranks. Logical Reasoning, English Comprehension and General Awareness follow the Quant section in the pecking order to decide a tie.

CMAT has been designed to rank all the candidates who appear in the test based on their aptitude towards the management education in the order of their merit. The objective of the test is not to eliminate the candidates from the process of seeking admission in the AICTE approved management programmes, rather to facilitate the institutions to select the suitable candidates as per their merit.